


Strange Armies in the Night

by GloriaMundi



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Community: contrelamontre, M/M, Mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-06-18
Updated: 2003-06-18
Packaged: 2017-10-06 06:53:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Achilles fights his dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strange Armies in the Night

"Come to my bed," he urged his cousin. "Come and lie down with me."

"When I lie next to you, your dreams slaughter sleep," Patroclus grumbled. "You fight strange armies in the night!"

But he let himself be led, let Achilles tie the three knots at the tent-flap to lock out the Myrmidons, lock out the High King Agamemnon, lock out sweet Briseis with her tears. Tonight the two of them would be alone again.

"Now I shall be master!" Patroclus proclaimed, laughing, and let Achilles kneel before him, unbuckling the heavy greaves with careful hands.

"Don't mark the metal," said Patroclus, looking down; Achilles looked up, into his dark eyes, and for a moment time turned away from them, letting Patroclus fall, letting Achilles fall, each into the other...

_Achilles is kneeling before the pyre, face flushed already though the wood was not yet alight. The last of the sunlight flashes on the knife in his hand. Stiff as an old man, he cuts locks of his blazing hair for the fire to consume. So that Patroclus will not forget._

But Patroclus' fingers were knotted in his hair, and his face was pressed against his cousin's groin, inhaling a heavy musk that aroused him as easily and thoughtlessly as a stallion scenting a mare.

Memory and desire took over. Achilles stroked, sucked, tasted, distracted by Patroclus' sheer presence, the life in him, coming out of him as hot as blood as Patroclus bit his own hand, that none might hear him cry aloud.

Then to the bed, where Achilles stood and let Patroclus lay aside each weapon, armour, garment, like the squire he had been at first. Once he was naked he stood, pressing against his lover, whispering to him. "Let me take you, conquer you... Give yourself up to me..."

Patroclus stretched out on the dirty, striped woollen blanket. His skin was dark at arms, legs, neck; paler on his back; pale as Briseis' across his buttocks, and in the soft places under the socket of his arms. Achilles knelt over him, hands tracing the saw-edge of the spine.

_He gasps as the cold skin twitches beneath his fingertips. He thinks that Patroclus is still alive, after all, after the havoc Hector's spear has wrought. Then he thinks that Patroclus had better be dead. The flesh under his hands is hard and cold, and his skin catches on the dead skin, which has a purple cast as though Patroclus has drunk poison._

_When the muscle spasms again, Achilles does not notice. He kneels in silence with his hands quiet on the dead man's ruined flesh, remembering his memory of this moment: remembering the waking dream that brought him here back when..._

For a moment there's a loop, flickering through present and future, from prescience to truth, from vision to sight: a loop where present leads from future as surely as future from past. The loop's of fine work like a bridal garland, and -- like a bridal garland -- a single blow might break it.

Next moment, Achilles' face was buried in Patroclus' neck; he could feel the sweat-damp locks against his forehead, like balm,

"Achilles?"

He made a wordless noise, like a child waking in the night. His hands tightened on his cousin's shoulders. There were tears on his cheeks.

"Nothing," he said at last. "It's nothing."

And set himself to make Patroclus alive, immortal, incandescent; to make him cry aloud with ecstasy, and never think of who might hear.

Later, Achilles lay and listened to his cousin's steady breath. In sleep, his dreams were waiting. He fought them back again.

-end-

**Author's Note:**

> written for the **contrelamontre** 'flash forward' challenge


End file.
